Steam's Game and Player
Statistics Page reflects a new record for concurrent users on Valve's online
service, showing they had 7,679,599 players online just before noon yesterday.
This came about 24 hours after they hit 7.5 million concurrent users and is
about a half-million users beyond the 7.19 million user record reported
under a month ago. Thanks
GameSpot.

* The final week of the year sees
EA’s 'FIFA 14' (-31%) remaining at No1, taking a 5th week since launch as the
top-selling software title, one more week than ‘FIFA 13’ last year – the
difference being that ‘FIFA 14’ claimed the Christmas No1 this year (last week)
whereas last year it was taken by ‘Call of Duty: Black Ops II’ in week 51, 2012.
Activision’s 'Call of Duty: Ghosts' remains at No2 (-24%) but is less than 2000
units behind ‘FIFA 14’ and has also taken 5 weeks at No1 since launch. Ubisoft’s
'Assassin's Creed IV: Black Flag' (-15%) remains at No3 having taken the top
spot once back at launch (wk44) but has never been out of the Top 5. EA’s
‘Battlefield 4’ remains at No4 for a 3rd consecutive week (-11%) having debuted
at No2 in the same week as ‘Assassin’s Creed IV’. Rockstar/Take 2’s ‘Grand Theft
Auto V’ has been climbing for the past 3 weeks and moves back in to the Top 5 at
No5 (-5%).

A new version 1.44 of X-Motor Racing
is now available, bringing changes and improvements to this indie racing
simulation. There is a new full version for registered users, and
their downloads page now
offers the updated version of the playable demo. The new version features
graphics engine optimizations, removes some out-of-date cars, adds a new BMW M3,
and more.

Hats off to Warpig for winning the regular season in our
Beat the Insiders
league. With a 14-2 final week I ended up at #25 of 31 players, but it was
really 25th of 28 if you don't count the players who didn't pick every game. I
also ended up losing bragging rights to a friend in the league, so there is no
joy in Mudville. I'll do a little looking around for a way to compete in playoff
picks, maybe Beat the Insiders will track these separately.